


on lies, secrets, and silence

by quensty



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, M/M, but i make the canon rules here motherfuckers, i guess i don't know how to tag things, this is p much the equivalent to making lance black paladin since dreamworks is full of cowards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 07:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14785943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quensty/pseuds/quensty
Summary: As soon as he slips into the shadows backstage, he pulls in close to Keith and tells him, “Try not to snap. Best way to make it’s to let them underestimate you.”“I can bat my eyelashes at them all I want,” says Keith flatly, “they’re never gonna bite.”“Play to a different advantage.”“I don’t have an advantage.”Lance’s eyebrows rise. “Everyone has an advantage.” He slides past Keith, the flash of his blue coat and the smell of summer a second behind him.





	on lies, secrets, and silence

**Author's Note:**

> first off, this fic was inspired by @leggylance on tumblr w their posts that made me lose my shit for, oh, a month. then i wrote this. check them out if u havent already. second, this fic was posted and taken down a while ago bc i didn't like that draft and i wrote it in less than 24 hours then posted it for no other reason than bc i'm dumb. now it's back! obviously.
> 
> the title is taken from adrienne rich. if u havent read her i highly reccomend it.

Keith was never meant to be in the Games.

He hadn’t known what it had been like for Shiro, and he’d told Keith not to watch them when they came on the television. Then he came back and he’d never talked about it, but Keith could imagine from the way Shiro touched the space where his shoulder and prosthetic met, from the way he’d thrown out all the mirrors in the house that first year after —

(by the way Keith listened, seven-years-old, stomach-down on the floor of their new house, and his ear against the door to Shiro’s room as he muttered in his sleep, voice hushed and frantic.)

— that no one ever really comes out alive from the Games. Not in any way that matters. Still, Shiro was crowned Champion, paraded around Panem, and Keith’s name was plucked out of the system. From seven-years-old, the most Keith would see of the Reapings was what he could make out from the side of the stage.

It was only a matter of time before something happened. Before a slip of paper in a large, crystalline fishbowl held a name that made Keith ice all over.

“I’m going to fix this. Keith, I — I swear, I’ll fix this,” Shiro shouted, grappling with the Peacekeepers even as they split them apart, pushing Keith forward and shoving Shiro back, a mess of white. He remembers it like a blur: pennies filling his mouth, people shouting, and harsh hands stuffing him into a train car. Keith doesn’t know how long he stood there in the rattling silence waiting to feel something other than numb.

 

***

 

The first time Keith sees him, it’s on a screen some time after the ceremony. He watches as the boy tribute from District Eleven walks up the stage, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows and his hair slicked back. Even in the grainy, almost static quality, it strikes Keith just how immaculate Lance looks, almost — almost unseeing as he stands there, the brother he volunteered for struggling just at the edge of the crowd.

The second time that Keith sees him, he almost puts an arrow through him.

“My bad,” he calls out, jogging in Keith’s direction, hands held up in surrender. There’s a bow strung over his shoulder. He gives Keith a small smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Still trying to figure this out.”

Keith spares a glance over his shoulder where, if he hadn’t bodily rolled out of the way the moment he did, the arrow lodged in the wall would be between Keith’s ribs. He stares straight back at Lance and bites his tongue, thinking back to what his mentor said about playing nice.

“You’re fine,” he says, getting to his feet.

Lance lets his eyes drop half closed, mouth set into a sharp-edged smirk. “Is that all I am?”

Keith is unimpressed. “Another close call like that,” he warns, “and something might slip out of my hand, too.”

Lance turns away, apparently bored, and goes, “I’ll take that to heart,” voice bland, on his way back to the other side of the training room.

On Keith’s way back to laying low by the herbs, he can feel the Careers sneak heavy, curious glances, like a rattlesnake’s narrowed eyes through tall grass, at him for the rest of the day.

 

***

 

Lance McClain is remade under the cameras.

Lance McClain, tribute from District Eleven, with his fitted pants and perfect sleeves, is an open invitation to look. He smiles at the host and looks at the audience with dark eyes, chin tilted upwards.

Lance McClain, slouched in his chair and perfectly at ease, looks untouchable.

As soon as he slips into the shadows backstage, he pulls in close to Keith and tells him, “Try not to snap. Best way to make it’s to let them underestimate you.”

“I can bat my eyelashes at them all I want,” says Keith flatly, “they’re never gonna bite.”

“Play to a different advantage.”

“I don’t have an advantage.”

Lance’s eyebrows rise. “Everyone has an advantage.” He slides past Keith, the flash of his blue coat and the smell of summer a second behind him.

On stage, when the host asks him, “But tell us honestly, Keith Kogane, what are you plans for the arena?” all Keith can do is be honest.

“I don’t plan on dying,” he tells the camera.

The host senses the opening, a shark to blood, and pounces. “Confidence! I love it. Everyone loves an underdog. What are you hiding up your sleeves?”

“Nothing,” he says, thinking of Lance’s voice in his head, “and I’m not an underdog.”

“Ha! Paint us a picture, then. Who are you?”

Keith stops. “A lioness,” he decides. Shiro told him about it once: at the kitchen counter, fingers over the spot where skin turns to  metal. The lions are the ones at the top of the food chain, he said, but don’t let yourself get fooled by appearances, Keith. A lioness is a hunter; it’s a defender; it’s a terror that will bring you down to your knees, shift your deepest foundations.

A hushed silence passes over the audience, all of them trying on the name, the taste it leaves behind. By the way most of them are smiling, they must’ve decided they liked it.

”Dharma,” the host agrees. His eyes on Keith are bright. “All right, Keith Kogane. All right. You’ve caught our attention.”

 

***

 

“Why would she send me out here with him?” Keith asks Shiro, catching him on his way out the building. The only thing that remains of District Five is sand and collapsed rubble. The sky fades into orange as the sun sets over it, fireflies humming to life. The remaining light catches on his prosthetic, glimmering. For not the first, for not the hundredth, for not the thousandth time, Keith is reminded that even if the outside world recycles its routine, Keith’s has been constantly shifting on its axis since the first Reaping.

He tells him, “She doesn’t trust you.”

“So, what? This is meant to scare me into a corner?”

He hesitates, licking his lips. “She didn’t want you from the beginning. It was Lance she wanted to rescue from the arena,” he says, so soft it’s almost lost in the wind. Keith closes his eyes against it, helpless, as it blows through him.

“She should’ve,” he manages. He swallows down the tight feeling in his throat, opening his eyes. “So it’s petty revenge, is that it?”

“She can’t predict you. Listen, no matter what happens, there’s going to be an end to this, and the people were promised a free election. She thinks you’re a threat.”

“I’m not a leader. Everyone knows that. It was Lance who made up the act. It was always him, behind everything.”

“Maybe.” Shiro considers him seriously for a moment. “But if you had to throw your support behind someone, would you choose her?

Keith stays silent. He thinks about her when the rescue team came in from the hangar, watching the flurry of movement from the other side of the room, and the way she’d said, _I won’t lose this war,_ the look in her eyes.

“She sent me here to die,” Keith surmises, barking out a short, dry laugh. “Figures.”

“You’re not going to die.” It’s a bad thing to promise in the remains of a battle, and Shiro must know it, but he doesn’t take it back, either. “C’mon. We’re running out of time.”

 

***

 

The countdown to the start of the Games is always the worst part.

The second worst is the moment after.

As soon as the buzzer sounds, Keith leaps and braces himself for the sound of a bomb going off, an unbearable heat, but it doesn’t come. His feet hit the ground hard and fast. The only thing left to do after that is run.

Keith doesn’t linger. He reaches the Cornucopia, grabs the tell-tale shine of sharp metal tucked into a belt, and makes a beeline for the forest line, kicking up sand as he goes.

Just a few seconds after he makes it past the trees, something snaps a couple feet to his left. Keith whips around to see Lance step out holding a bow and an arrow. Keith freezes, caught.

He doesn’t have time to reach for his knives before Lance raises his arm and says, “Duck,” only a heartbeat before he lets go.

The arrow flies past him and hits a girl with an axe running towards them just as she steps onto the shore. The cannon goes off before her body even has time to hit the ground.

Keith is so shocked he stays frozen for longer than he should, the scene replaying over in his mind the way it must on every television in Panem, slow-motion and zoomed in. But what surprises him more is the way Lance grabs him by the wrist, tugging hard.

He says, “Move.”

Keith forces himself to look away, letting himself get pulled forward. Branches hit him across the face, uneven ground making him stumble down a steep hill. But he rolls, lets his legs move him through the discomfort. They stop after a few minutes, after an hour, after a day of running, listening for the sounds of someone else over their own breathing.

Keith faces him, a quick turn of step. “Why are you helping me?” He’s been holding it in since Lance found him, and instead of shooting him, had touched him and saved his life. Since before that — since training, since the interviews.

It happens for only a split second, a fracture of a second, but Keith watches as Lance’s gaze drops to Keith’s mouth.

(With sudden, cold clarity, Keith remembers watching as the host said,  _Handsome boy like you, there has to be a pretty little thing waiting for you back home._

 _If only I was that lucky,_ said Lance, after a pause, where he, for the first time, looked completely caught off-guard.

Everyone had wondered, once it was all over, but Keith never thought, he’d never even considered — )

Except Lance McClain doesn’t do anything without a plan, has never shown all his cards at once. He played the dim charming farm boy because it meant it put a target off his back, and in doing so he’d given Keith an audition to the Careers. That’s the part he keeps getting stuck on.

“You said you weren’t going to die here.” Belatedly, he brings his eyes back up to meet Keith’s, making sure Keith noticed. 

“So?”

“I’m going to make sure of it.”

Lance pulls up his sleeve, all the way to his shoulder, so Keith can see for himself the scarred, puckered skin that crawls up his arm. It’s a burn mark. There was a fire in District Eleven years ago, burning down almost everything on the southern side. The Capitol had refused to offer any help other than extra hours in the fields, trying to make something out of ash and dirt.

Keith blinks. “You were there. When we sent -- you were there.”

“Like I said.” Lance shoves his sleeve back down, a sharp edge to his voice. “I owe that much.”

“Shiro did that, not me. I was just —“ _a kid_ , he means to say, but Lance must’ve been, too, when Shiro did all he could to help. No older than Keith, except Keith was the one sitting on a marble floor learning the multiplication tables, and Lance was — probably biting through a towel as someone rubbed ointment on that burn.

“I don’t need your help,” Keith says.

“Maybe not.”

A cannon goes off, somewhere in the distance.

Six dead. Eighteen others and Keith. Eighteen between Keith and survival.

He looks between himself and Lance. Either Lance makes it out of this or he doesn’t. Either Keith makes it back to District Twelve or he doesn’t. It’s all in what cards he decides to play.

“You’re good,” Keith tells him. “Better than I gave you credit for.”

“As much as I love a compliment,” says Lance, “I need an answer from you.”

“That is your answer,” he says. “You’ve been planning this from the beginning. All of it.” And one day you’re going to tell me why.

For now, all he can hope is that Lance catches on to what Keith’s saying; that Keith is agreeing to be a part of this — charade, whatever kind of plan Lance has been constructing behind the curtain all this time.

If he’s surprised, none of it shows on his face. All he does is let his mouth tip up, the very beginning of a smile. It’s probably the realest thing Keith has ever seen from him. “Best way to make it is to be underestimated.”

Lance starts walking, stepping over rocks and holes in the dirt.

Eighteen others. Seventeen others and Lance. And Keith. And survival.

Keith shoulders his bag and follows.

 

***

 

“We’ve been like this before,” he says into the dark. “Just like this.”

Keith doesn’t flinch, but his shoulders hunch up like he wants to. He counts down the seconds until it’s safe to spare him a glance edgewise, voice calm. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“That look on your face. I’ve seen it before.” Lance stops pretending to be asleep and pulls himself up by his elbows. “That first time in the Games. The very first time, you looked at me just like that, trying to decide whether or not to kill me.”

Keith looks around the room; it looks like everyone is still asleep, so he lets his shoulders dip, rubbing the bridge of his nose raw. “That’s not what I’m doing. And I never wanted to kill you. There was never enough time.”

“There wasn’t enough time,” he repeats hollowly.

(For a second, Keith is back in that white room, his back plastered against the floor. He’s back with Lance’s fingers wrapped around his throat, that same unreadable, unrecognizable change in his eyes. And Keith not processing any of it while it was happening. There was only shock, how it’d taken too long for his brain to realize he needed to move. He’d never been in danger with Lance around, not even that first time in the Games. He hadn’t thought to be afraid.)

(It hurts a little less each time he thinks about it.

This time, it feels like someone pushing a knife between his ribs and twisting.)

“You tried to help me that day, when you almost shot me,” comes out of him, a response to pain. “Then you helped me the first day in the arena. There was never enough time to think about killing you. You were —” he swallows, eyes closing. It hurts a little less each time, he thinks dimly.

“An ally.” He looks up to see Lance’s impassive face, the firm line of his mouth. “Friend. Lover. Fiance. Enemy. Teammate. Which one is it, Keith Kogane?” His knuckles bleed white. “Defender of the Defenseless. The Lioness of the Revolution. Please. You’ve never known how to fight for anyone but yourself.”

It gives Keith an odd feeling of displacement: leather straps, a white bed, a sneer. He takes a step back on instinct alone.

“Lance?” Keith’s hand, unthinkingly, goes for his knife. “ _Lance_?”

It pangs in Keith’s chest, how quick the change is. Lance’s eyes widen momentarily, going still, dropping his hands back down until they form fists on his pants legs. “I didn’t mean that — I didn’t _mean_ to do that, it’s just —” he inhales. Exhales. “It’s hard to tell the difference between what’s real and what isn’t.”

“Then ask.”

Keith watches his eyes dart up to meet Keith’s, something there going soft, just as his back goes straight, all as quick as a flinch.

(Lance doesn’t mean for him to see it, but he’s never as subtle as he thinks he is.)

Lance’s eyes narrow. “You’re not offering for my sake.”

“You’re a dick,” Keith fires back. “Ask if you want or stop talking.”

They’ve always known how to crowd into each other’s space without ever physically moving. It was no different in the first Games —

(or when Lance had to move his things into Keith’s house afterwards, putting on the mask of someone who _looked_ at him like that when they hardly spoke to each other once the doors were closed, once the cameras powered down; or right before the second Games in that train car, under the stars, their voices traveling over the flat, blurry world in front of them as Keith told him _If it has to be one of us, it deserves to be you_ )

— and like the sunrise, like death, some things never change.

Very, very slowly, Lance relaxes against the wall. He asks, “My favorite color is blue, right? Real or not real?”

 

***

 

“I feel like it’s important to remind you,” says Lance, “that the last time you trusted me, I slammed you against a wall and tried to kill you.”

“You’re handcuffed,” Keith points out, “and it’s not the same.”

“It’s exactly the same.”

“No, it’s not. This time, I know who I’m looking at.” Lance watches him say it — always watching — as Keith swallows hard.

They don’t have time for this. They all know it, but it still takes too long for Keith to stop looking at the surprised, soft look that’s transformed the rigid line of Lance’s mouth. He forces himself to eat up the last steps between them and snaps the cuffs off Lance’s wrists.

“Keith,” Shiro warns, but he doesn’t get to finish before Keith’s snagged the bow and arrows off one of the soldiers’ backs and shoved it into Lance’s chest.

“There are going to be a lot of people down that mine,” he tells him. “Anything could happen. I need to know if I can trust you.”

Lance’s mouth opens. Closes. He looks down, runs a finger down the tightly strung bow, the black material of the handle, before testing the feeling of it in his hands. He slings the bundle over his shoulder, reaches behind his head to grab an arrow.

“ _Hold_ ,” Keith says over the sound of guns rising.

“I’m a good shot,” says Lance. “Real or not real?”

“Real.”

Lance meets his eyes, unwavering, and gives one simple, curt nod.

“You’re going with Shiro down the other way to corner whoever’s down there. Move,” he tells the rest of the team. He forges a path, pushing past the unit, and does his best not to look back.

They’ve hardly moved at all before Lance pushes past the team, grabs Keith by the lapels of his jacket despite everyone’s shouts to stop, the click of bullets in a chamber, to press their mouths firmly together.

Keith’s lips part in surprise and their teeth click. It’s too fast, too hard, but the simple sensation of Lance’s fingers gently guiding his jaw, his teeth on Keith’s bottom lip, is enough to make Keith dizzy. The floor under his feet goes formless. He has to brace himself on Lance’s shoulder to keep from stumbling backwards, helpless.

“Take me with you,” says Lance, breathless. “We’ve always made a great team. Take me with you.”

“This is risky,” Shiro cuts in. “Keith —”

“You said you knew who you were looking at,” Lance says. “So do I.” He repeats, lower: “Take me with you.”

“You know who you’re looking at,” he echoes.

Lance’s smile is like it always has been — earth-shaking, blinding, unbearable. “I’d recognize that mullet anywhere.”

Keith stares, not knowing what to say. He can’t help but think back to two years ago, when he thought of Lance as someone he thought he could live with killing if it meant he got back home. He hadn’t known it then, hadn’t known it kneeling in the forest floor, not on those nights when Lance would make room on his bed so Keith could put his back against the wall, chin brushing Lance’s collarbone; not even when he thought Lance was dead, clutching at him so tight he thought he’d rip his jacket -- he hadn’t, not in any way that mattered, but he knows it now.

Keith’s mouth opens and closes multiple times before he jerks his head. His face is still warm from where Lance touched him. “Sure. Yes, let’s go.”

 

***

 

“Can’t sleep?”

Keith turns just as Lance plops down next to him, feet dangling off the side of the open train door. The only light comes from the passing lights and the soft shine of a few stars, but it’s enough to make out the lines of Lance’s face.

“You’re on the wrong train, McClain,” says Keith.

He shrugs. “Benefit of the engaged being sent off for slaughter. Hard for people to say no.”

Keith looks back out. There’s not a lot to see, especially this late. The land is too bleak, too quiet. All there is is the way Lance looks in the dark, the way he holds himself when he isn’t working to keep up an illusion. Keith doesn’t know when that changed, when Lance stopped thinking it was necessary to put on an act around him. Their shoulders brush and neither of them shift away.

“Only one of us is making it out alive this time. You realize that.” He waits for Lance to turn towards him before adding, “And it’s going to be one of us.”

“I told you before, hot shot,” Lance says. “I’m not letting you die in that arena.”

“It deserves to be you,” Keith blurts. “If it has to be one of us, it deserves to be you.”

Lance doesn’t move next to him. Keith doesn’t regret saying it; Lance has people he needs to take care of back home. Keith only has an empty house and ghosts that hide at every corner, picking at his thoughts like a grapevine. Keith can live with dying as long as it means Lance is going to make it out of this alive.

“I —” Lance falters. “I made you a promise.”

“I made promises, too, Lance. I’ve asked for promises,” he adds, “but never from you. I don’t want you to trade your life for mine.”

Lance is the objective this time, he told Coran. This is the mission.

“Trade lives? That’s the game, Keith.”

“This isn’t up for discussion. I’m telling you, I’m not asking.”

“Jesus! Why can’t you just — why don’t you —” Lance’s voice goes gentle, and it’s only then that Keith realizes that they’ve been gravitating towards each other. He doesn’t remember Lance putting his hand on Keith’s face, but it’s there now.  Lance’s nose touches his. His fingers land on the space just above his collarbone. “Let me,” Lance says quietly, licking his lips. “Let me.”

He breathes in, sharp. “Lance.”

Then it’s like something breaks. Keith can almost hear it happen. Lance presses his forehead against Keith’s, hitting the seam of Keith’s lips and missing his mouth by an inch. It’s not what he was expecting, not exactly what Keith wanted so badly he could break out of his skin for it, but it’s still the most intimate thing he’s ever done, being able to feel Lance’s pulse pick up under his touch, his breath labored.

“We should get ready for tomorrow,” Lance breathes.

Slowly, inch-by-inch, Lance retreats in one of the dozen ways he knows how, getting to his feet.

“Lance.” Keith thinks about grabbing him; he thinks about what would happen if Keith stopped him, cornered him against the wall and maybe didn’t even kiss him, just stood there and breathed in the same air until morning came. Maybe Lance would let him. Maybe he’d even put his hand on the nape of Keith’s neck and aim right this time.

Keith’s voice comes out strange. “Lance, wait.”

Lance stops at the door, his back to Keith. “It’s all right. We all have things we have to give up.”

He’s gone as quickly as he arrived, leaving Keith feeling like he’s been dropped from somewhere very high up with nothing to grab onto.

Through the cold, through the water closing over his head, he swears to himself that Lance McClain will not be that; Lance McClain is going to make it out of this alive.

**Author's Note:**

> find me at quensty.tumblr.hell if ur into that sort of thing. or @cleromancer for the vld content. forewarning that it's mostly just me yodeling in the tags.


End file.
